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Success requires a broad set of characteristics: Ambition, confidence, patience, resilience, creativity and many more. Among those characteristics, a certain kind of maturity is needed to succeed in life.
There are many misconceptions about what it means to be mature. We hear things like “grow up!” or “behave your age!” or “you are so immature!”.
I believe growing up and being an adult has absolutely nothing to do with how you look or what things you like.
In fact, I believe it improves your happiness if you do not lose your childlike sense for fun and can still enjoy Hanna Montana or Hot Wheels.
Growing up depends much more on maturing your mindset. That’s where the real change is supposed to happen.
Being mature has to do with your values and how you perceive the world around you.
And although many people are legally adults, they still have an immature mindset that keeps them from leveling up in life.
This article is not meant to criticize you. It is supposed to make you aware of things you might want to change in your life to get one step closer to success.
Like Tony Robbins says: Success is only 20 percent the mechanics but 80 percent the mindset!
Acquiring skills is easy nowadays. There is an unfathomable amount of free information online, and many online courses are specifically designed to take you step by step through the mechanics.
But if your mindset is not shaped for success, all this information won´t bring you far.
Therefore I have compiled 11 elements that make up a mature mindset. Enjoy!
1. Your perception of time has changed
As children, we didn’t care much about time. Time couldn’t pass quick enough for us.
We wanted it to be Christmas already so that we could open our presents.
We asked a hundred times when we would finally arrive at our destination.
And we couldn’t wait until we were finally old enough to watch that movie, to ride that rollercoaster or to drive that car.
Time often seemed never-ending.
However, as you grow up, that suddenly changes.
There is no specific age when that switch will happen to you. For some people, it occurs at the beginning of their thirties. For me, it happened with eighteen.
Suddenly, I noticed that the 8-hour drive to my grandparents passed quicker than when I was younger.
I always used to dread that arduous drive, where I always needed to find new ways to entertain myself.
Now, that time seems to pass almost twice as quickly and I could stare out of the window the whole time.
The same happened during my day to day life. When I started studying Law, I quickly realized that this was the first time in my life, that I felt like there were not enough hours in a day.
There was always something left I wanted/needed to do.
As you get older, your perception of time shifts. Time suddenly passes way quicker than it did when you were a child.
Due to that, we become more aware of how fast our time is running out.
In fact, we only really have a third of the time we think we have.
Just think about it. The day has 24 hours. Let’s say you sleep 8 hours a day (if you sleep less, great! That means you have more time left for yourself.) That’s a third of your day.
If you have a 9 to 5 job, you work 45 hours out of 168 hours a week. If we add the time to get to and from work, we can say you spent another third of your time working.
So what is left? In the end, we only have about a third of our week to spend freely.
And of course, that third also includes cleaning your house, driving to and from places, etc.
Suddenly, there isn’t much time left at all. How do you want to spend that time?
Mature people value their time more. They try to use it intentionally and don’t want to waste it on unimportant things like binge-watching a series. Because is that something you are going to look back on at your deathbed?
Because mature people spend their time intentionally, they can accomplish much more in life.
I am sure you follow some YouTubers that are the same age as you. They have the same number of hours in a day as you have. And they might even be university students like you or have a 9 to 5 job like you.
While you are watching multiple YouTube videos a day, they are creating the videos! They are building a business which will provide for their future!
But they are not much different from you. They simply decided to watch less YouTube videos and instead start creating some themselves.
We all have the same number of hours in a day. Your success depends on how you spent them!
Read also: 15 Ways To Spend Your Time Wisely
2. You value punctuality
This goes hand in hand with valuing time. Once you know how limited time is, you do not want to waste yours or others.
Lost time can never be retrieved! If you look at it that way, to steal somebody’s time is one of the worst things you can (legally) do to them!
Punctuality is a highly valuable skill if you want to network. Because successful people are not willing to let other people waste their time. And you need to surround yourself with people more successful than you are if you want to level up.
Because as Jim Rohn famously said:
“You are the average of the five people you spent the most time with.”
Jim Rohn
So be punctual!
3. You realize the world doesn’t revolve around you
Part of growing up and maturing is the realization that the world does not revolve around you.
We live on a planet populated by 7.5 billion humans! (If you want the exact number check out the population clock).
And although we all are the leading role in the movie we call our life, we do not even appear in the movies of the vast majority of humankind.
I don´t want to depress you, but as long as you are not Beyoncé or Elon Musk, not many people will take notice should you suddenly pass away.
We cannot stop living in a first-person view. But we can try to look at situations out of the bird’s perspective.
Stop judging people by their words or parts of their behavior. You never know what could have been the cause of that.
The sooner you learn how to look at the world through other people´s eyes, the easier it will get for you to get along with them.
Being able to connect with others and providing high value for them is key to building a successful business.
4. You care less about what other people think of you
As we mature, we get to know ourselves better. We develop various interests and opinions, which will clash with those of others.
It is inevitable. As soon as there is more than one opinion, there are going to be people that will disagree with you.
If you keep caring what other people think of you, you will never be able to be yourself and always have to adapt to different peoples opinions.
But you only have one life. Everybody else already has a life of their own. Why should they be allowed to decide over yours? You should be the only one deciding how to live it.
And anyway, why should you even try to be like everyone else? Our world rewards uniqueness!
We all love people that are unapologetically themselves! We need people who strive for the extraordinary!
Just imagine nobody would have been crazy enough to fit a whole computer into a small mobile device.
Imagine a world without insane inventors and visionaries that dreamed of carriages moving without horses or of humans walking on the moon.
Can you even think of one famous person, who is absolutely and utterly normal? What even is “normal”?
To succeed in life, you need to be unique. You need to be able to give people something that they will not get from others. And with that automatically come others who will criticize you for that uniqueness.
But truly mature people know better than to be bothered.
5. You are comfortable spending time alone
Working your way to the top can be lonely. You have to put in long hours and might need to cancel multiple meetings with your friends.
If you are serious about making it to the top as fast as possible, you will probably stop partying and start hustling.
But be aware! Being a loner can actually keep you from succeeding! The most significant achievements are always a group effort.
On your way to the top sooner or later you will need the help of a mentor or start to outsource specific tasks.
So, expect to be lonely at times, but do not try to do it all on your own!
6. You have a work-life balance
As mentioned in the previous point, you will not always have somebody at your side on your way to success.
Therefore you need to look after yourself.
Maturity means being self-aware and listening to your body. Are you tired, hungry, thirsty or overwhelmed?
Your body and mind are the things that keep you alive. There is no living without them.
So be mature enough to look after yourself or else you will burn out or get sick before you were able to succeed.
7. You don’t have a victim mentality
We all know that children like to blame everyone else for their failures. It is the fault of their parents, their siblings, their classmates, their dog, their friends, their teachers and so on.
Scaringly enough, many adults stick to that victim mentality. They always have somebody to blame for why they didn´t get that promotion or why they are too late.
Real maturity means to take responsibility for your own life!
Get rid of that victim mentality and accept that you have control over most things in your life. Therefore if something goes wrong, you have to blame yourself and nobody else!
Connected to that victim mentality is the belief of being entitled to things.
The vast majority of people believe that the rich should take care of them. They feel entitled to the money of other people. But why?
Imagine you work for years for your business to succeed. Each year you get richer and the richer you get, the more people feel entitled to your money. Isn´t that strange?
You got that money by providing value for those people. Why do they think you should give them more?
I believe one cause for this Robin Hood mentality is that people can´t take responsibility for their own lives.
Look at the most successful entrepreneurs out there, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos, Elon Musk or Mark Zuckerberg. They do not feel entitled to money. They create money! They take responsibility for their lives!
If you want to be rich, you have to drop your victim mentality and start taking back the control over your life!
Read also: 9 Mindsets That Are Keeping You Poor
8. You are open-minded
“A mind is like a parachute. It doesn’t work if it is not open.”
Frank Zappa
Having an open mind makes you available for incredible opportunities.
Life presents us with different opportunities every day. In this world possibilities are limitless.
If you are ready to seize them, incredible success awaits you!
And if you want to feed you mind with more inspirational content I highly suggest you check out my Reading List for Personal Growth. I update it regularly on all my favorite non fiction books.
9. You focus on delayed gratification
A huge problem of our generation is the need for instant gratification. Nowadays we get everything at a moments notice.
Do you want something to eat? Call the delivery guy!
Do you have a question concerning a product? Customer service is available 24/7.
Whatever we want or need we can have it almost instantly. This has created an impatient society.
But guess what? There are some things you can´t have instantly. Among them is success.
There is no quick fix for success. And most people do not get famous overnight. It might seem like they did, but often they put in a lot of work until that “magic” night happened.
If you want to be successful, whether it is in sports or business, you need to be patient.
Take this Blog for example. I´ve been writing content for almost a month. And until now absolutely nobody has ever read a single piece of my content.
If I let impatience overtake me now and give up, I will never have success with my Blog.
But I am not aiming for short term gratification. I want to build a sustainable business that will give me financial freedom for decades to come. Understandably, that needs more time.
You need to plan long term!
“Most people overestimate what they can do in one year and underestimate what they can do in ten years.”
Bill Gates
10. You know when to take risks
“A ship is safe in harbor, but that’s not what ships are for.”
John A. Shedd
The most significant success comes from taking calculated risks.
The emphasis lies on “calculated”. Being mature means to ponder when it is worth to take a risk.
Jumping off a cliff or replicating the Fast and Furious won´t get you closer to success in life. In fact, it might shorten your life significantly.
Maturity means finding a healthy balance between risk and safety and using risk to your advantage.
11. You know when to pick a fight
Just like with the previous point this one is all about finding the balance.
Sometimes voicing your opinion and getting into a fight can put you massive steps forward in life.
But more often than not a fight will only do damage.
If you already notice that your opponent doesn´t even care for your arguments, why do you keep making them? It will get you nowhere, and you only lose precious time.
And as we learned time is too valuable to be wasted!
There you have it. What about you, Felicity Seekers, are you mature enough to succeed in life?
What was your favorite point and which one do you intend to improve in your life?
Leave a comment down below!
I´d love to see how mature this community is.
